Based on the research of a small advisory group formed of key figures in the Scottish Parliament, Jim Johnston and James Mitchell use their extensive experience of Scottish politics to discuss ideas about the Parliament's future. Sir Paul Grice, Holyrood chief executive, is chairing the advisory group which includes members such as former PO George Reid, Caroline Gardner (Auditor General), Louise MacDonald (chief exec Young Scot), and Sarah Davidson (civil servant). Made up of a series of short essays, this book discusses vital issues such as public engagement, key challenges for the Parliament arising from issues such as Brexit, and what we can learn from the past. This book is truly essential read in this uncertain but exciting time for Scottish politics.

What can we remove from ourselves and still be ourselves?  Written after a brain tumour diagnosis early in the pandemic, The King of Terrors is a meditation on living with illness and the forces required to heal. These forces are not always what we expect – they may not even be medical. Jim Johnstone implies that language, relationships, and our immersion in the natural world can free us from the spectre of impending collapse. Haunted by the decimation of the North American landscape and the anxiety of living in a polarized society, Johnstone’s poems are bodily reflections that ask how we can reframe our past to make sense of the present. The King of Terrors oscillates between the personal and the public, the clinical and the spiritual, so we’re never quite sure what we are seeing, no matter how familiar. "There is a moving, fierce intensity to The King of Terrors. Jim Johnstone knowingly reminds us that betrayals of the body are also betrayals of language, ‘each bloody / mouthful a sentence fragment.’ These are lines of admission, ambition, and harrowing truth, and Johnstone – despite a future only as certain ‘as the body // it inhabits’ – offers a form of redemption, for the fortitude of the sick, for poetry itself." – Randall Mann, author of Deal: New and Selected Poems "The King of Terrors is a luminous meditation on the otherworld of illness and treatment, contemplating the mysteries of death and the frontiers of mind and body with sharp clarity and radical vulnerability. These mesmerizing, urgent poems admit us not only to waiting rooms and brain scans, but also to the intimate fears that accompany the estranging experience of being unwell, or, as the poet says, living 'between / age and agency.' Haunting, stark, and lyrical, The King of Terrors is charged, as all the best poetry is, with the shock of the mortal." – Sarah Holland-Batt, author of The Jaguar

Based on the research of a small advisory group formed of key figures in the Scottish Parliament, Jim Johnston and James Mitchell use their extensive experience of Scottish politics to discuss ideas about the Parliament's future. Sir Paul Grice, Holyrood chief executive, is chairing the advisory group which includes members such as former PO George Reid, Caroline Gardner (Auditor General), Louise MacDonald (chief exec Young Scot), and Sarah Davidson (civil servant). Made up of a series of short essays, this book discusses vital issues such as public engagement, key challenges for the Parliament arising from issues such as Brexit, and what we can learn from the past. This book is truly essential read in this uncertain but exciting time for Scottish politics.

Mercurial and modern, The Next Wave is an output-based anthology of 21st century Canadian poetry. Curated by Jim Johnstone, it features 40 early-to-mid-career Canadian writers selected from a diverse range of national and international presses. While The Next Wave surveys poets from across Canada, its contributors are the product of a global mindset -- a distinct generation of writers characterized by the variety of their formal and aesthetic choices. Gathered into an anthology that is pertinent as well as predictive, each of the poets in The Next Wave is proof of a re-invigorated national literature. The Next Wave contains over 150 poems from writers who have published exclusively in the new century. Featuring poets: Jordan Abel; James Arthur; Billy-Ray Belcourt; Linda Besner; Shane Book; Suzanne Buffam; Mark Callanan; Chad Campbell; Dani Couture; Kayla Czaga; Sadiqa de Meijer; Joe Denham; Raoul Fernandes; Autumn Getty; Jason Guriel; Leah Horlick; Liz Howard; Stevie Howell; Amanda Jernigan; Aisha Sasha John; Evan Jones; Sonnet LAbbe; Ben Ladoucer; Jeff Latosik; Canisia Lubrin; Nyla Matuk; Jacob McArthur Mooney; Sachiko Murakami; Alexandra Oliver; Soraya Peerbaye; James Pollock; Michael Prior; Damian Rogers; Johanna Skibsrud, Souvankham Thammavongsa; Nick Thran; Daniel Scott Tysdal; Sheryda Warrener; Ian Williams Catriona Wright.